Cleveland Museum of Art
Before the Race
Edgar DegasLinkedCulture matchlcp-568c79847d76
- Date
- c. 1887–89
- Medium
- pastel with charcoal underdrawing on tracing paper mounted on cardboard
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 135262
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
Degas returned to the theme of horse and rider time and again throughout his career. Scholars believe that he executed the first version of this composition of four jockeys on horseback in a charcoal and pastel drawing. Several years later, he traced the composition, reversing its orientation to create the highly finished Cleveland pastel. The palette is intensified, the distance between the second and third jockeys is increased, and the foliage along the horizon has been added to suggest a lush spring day. When creating the series to which this pastel belongs, Edgar Degas was inspired by the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who attempted to record motion in static images.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.
- Provenance
- by 1918-after 1933: Henry Lerolle [1848–1929], Paris | ?-?: (Hector Brame, Paris) | ?-?: (César M. de Hauke, New York) | after 1933-1939: (Jacques Seligmann, New York, sold to Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Cleveland, OH) | 1939-1958: Leonard C. Hanna Jr. [1889–1957], Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1958-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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